Carl "Do You Have Any" Cameron: "All of these guys backed the Captian's decision not to engage, so what are you reacting to".

Guys, that is the way it went down. I am afraid very few people know about the gulf of Tonkin incident, and how it helped drag us into a nightmare. Yeah on form he did not look good, but he had the right answer based on our history. He knew the history of such things, but the audience doesn't so they just jeer.

11 Comments:

Rick said...

Mark,

It was Hume that asked Paul what he was reacting to. Cameron was the moron who asked Paul if he was electable.

Now to your point. Everyone on that stage agreed with the decision the commander of our ship made. The point Huckabee and Thompson made was if we are attacked we would send them to meet those 72 virgins and to hell, but they said they agreed with the decicion of the commander.

They agreed with the commander's decision, but in an inflammatory, make-no-mistake-we'll-kill-'em-all-if-they-do-it-again kind of way. Paul was responding to that mostly.

In every debate I've seen so far, the others have favored a very arrogant, "America never has to apologize" attitude. In fact, it was Duncan Hunter who said that America never has to apologize, in an earlier debate. And the other candidates attitudes and positions were the same. It seems that Paul has gotten as tired of the arrogant rhetoric as I have.

One thing the U.S. ships have to be concerned about is being attacked by these little boats like the USS Cole was attacked. We lost U.S. soldiers in that attack so you can't take these small boats of Iran as not being dangerous, but what some of the article Mark linked to seems to be saying is they are no threat.

The opposite of Duncan Hunter's "America never has to apologize" is Paul's blame America for everything thought process.

Well that is true. The people were misled into believing Saddam was implicated in 9/11 and was a threat to us with weapons of mass destruction. The Dems failed in their duty to be the loyal opposition and just went with the flow. All of them did. But NOT RON PAUL. They all made the wrong call. He made the right call.

Paul can slice into their base and win this thing and the Dems failure on the war is one reason why.

Not one time did I hear this administration say Saddam was in any way responsible for 9/11. What they did say is that intel showed he had WMD's that was a direct threat to our security. Not only did this administration say it so did Bill Clinton, Hillary, Al Gore, John Kerry.

You honestly believe Paul can win this Republican nomination? Or are you thinking of an Independent run later in the year? Michigan will tell where Paul is going in this race. He has spent alot of money on television ads in Michigan. We will see how well he does.

Paul has more money left than any of them except self-funder Romney. He also has a built in base of support in 50 states, and the firm belief that the longer he has to make his case the more obvious it is that he is right about some things- especially the dollar, spending, and foreign policy.

When you talk about finishes in Michigan you are talking horse-race. That is textbook political thinking, but it is not any good at figuring what Ron Paul will do next. You have to think like Paul to figure out what he is going to do. The guy is totally idea-driven. As long as he is getting exposure for his message he is going to go on. He could not care less about advancing his career or getting favor with any of the kingmakers who got us into this mess.

He will go on till the convention, hoping for a lock-up and time to get his message out.

The administration did not say Saddam was behind 9/11, but most of the people believed it, and still believe it even though it is not true, so the people were indeed misled. How much responsibility the administration bears for failing to correct this misinformation before leading us to war is an open question. The point is, we had no reason to go in and no legitimate reason to stay now.

We have spent over 300 billion on the war, while also incurring future obligations that could run the tab to over ONE TRILLION dollars. We could secure a lot of border and purchase a lot of health care with ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. Maybe not as much as we could have before the dollar got wrecked, but a lot.

People thought Saddam had WMD. They were wrong. That is why the idea of pre-emptive war is idiocy. We can't garrison every country in the world that WE THINK might be developing the capability to hurt us. It does not matter whether you think pre-emptive war is a good idea or a bad a idea- either way we simply cannot afford to continue it as a policy.

Nor can we afford to nation-build. Even if you think it was OK for us to go in four years ago, it is not OK to stay and build 14 huge basis, indicating an intention to stay for decades.

I don't see how Paul can continue to run an effective campaign when he is pulling less than 10% of the vote in each state. All the money in the world may not be enough. Romney is finding this out in his battle with John McCain. It certainly looks like this will come down between Romney & McCain, advantage Romney.

I am not sure he has even "run and effective campaign" to this point! It is a race against time. Seems like he is counting on the race not being resolved when the sun comes up on Feb. 6th. They are sending campaign materials to states that have primaries in April and May! That is his only viable strategy, but it counts on things that are out of his control - like no decisive winner emerging.

Problem I see with it is that even if they are right, the others seem willing to gang up on him- seems like either McCain or Romney could lock it up by offering Huck the VP spot early.